Whatever it is, it is not attractive. Surely they can come up with something more efficient and visually appealing for whatever it is that is supposed to represent.
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Whatever it is, it is not attractive. Surely they can come up with something more efficient and visually appealing for whatever it is that is supposed to represent.
It's a Tetris mini-game for when you're inbetween spawn windows.
I noticed that too.. 7 grids, 5x5 (25 squares), but what would be the point of making an equipment thing like this? What would be the point of the different colors? Why wouldn't it just be on the equipment menu "Set 1" "Set 2" etc..
Are there 25 slots for equipment? EDIT: Nope, I just counted and there is only 22.
I was thinking that there could be one for each party member... 7 grids for 7 party members, but that doesn't really make sense either.... seeing as the bottom left grid has more dots than the rest.
Of course.
Like it's been stated, just because a game is set in a fantasy setting does NOT mean you cannot be realistic about it. But people will just forget about this little inconvenient truth and go back to demanding that fantasy only uses cartoonish graphics (which the original screenshot is NOT).
It looks like bag space to me. Also, if you don't like it, make one that caters in your favor.
Let's take a look at a more realistic raiding UI shall we?
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...310_161150.jpg
What about skillbar sets? Differnt skillbar setups you can one click to? Green for optimal to your class, red for not optimal, dark gray for empty, light gray for item? Eh...
Why would you think the detail, the bump maps, the normal maps - and the texture job itself would downgrade, if the models that are coming in and being published through dats by the users, are just as good or even better? Everything we have right now is making the port. EVERY MODEL, every texture, everything. The fact they are scrapping the maps and adding new assets doesn't mean the game is gonna change for the bad. What we are seeing in the new engine is new capabilities on the post processing effects, along with a wider range for people to add to the game.( Lighting, Dominant Linghting, etc etc) I'm the kind of guy that I'm NOT gonna add a ton of addons to the game. But having 1 or 2 that'll help my gathering, save the spots, save the items that each spot gave me. This in the future makes the coding not only easier for the dev group, for what it seems, but also for the public.
I'm 100% sure, that they'll redo, or reuse some of the current assets they have. (Assets = chairs, lamps, static meshes etc etc)
I'm not trying to bash you, but I'm trying to clear up the whole "it's gonna be worse than what we currently have". That thought is just nonsense.
Edit: To also point out your worry, what you could probably worry about the most, is the shaders. That handles more on how the lighting is going to affect the normal maps and specular maps changing the overall look of materials.
I really don't like minimalist UIs. You may as well just turn the UI off everything is made so tiny you can't read it.
I'm really surprised so many people care strongly one way or the other about the game graphics in one picture. Saying a still image is being rendered in real time by the new engine doesn't mean much at all, especially when they've also said most of the optimization is in rendering a large number of people and effects and such. Every game made to this date can produce screenshots where a shadow is out of place or you see jagged edges or something else that's slightly off, not to mention the question of how fast it's running while delivering that, or what settings are currently being used and what the range of options actually is. Who even can say what all those effects in the picture actually look like?
The test of a game engine will come from seeing it in motion, not from whether or not you think you'll be able to make wallpapers out of it.
The reason we are examining this screenshot tho is that to date it is all we have. Some of us know how rendering engines work, we know that you cannot get something for nothing. Making the engine scale to lower hardware and the PS3 while allowing more models on screen will require a combination of clever optimisation and sacrifices in top end quality.
The question is where those sacrifices will be made? How big they will be? As a player with a mid to high end PC and a 24" 1920x1200 monitor I don't want to lose the high resolution textures and high poly count models which I love in FFXIV.
I like the screen shot. The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is UI customisation.
While I think it's great, I hope SE doesn't allow too much freedom (as in, say, WoW), as I have the fear that some might become a standard that must be used (and we all know how elitists can be).
Extreme example ahead.
http://www.keenandgraev.com/wp-conte...09/crazyui.jpg
*shudders*
Oh, and I also found a nice article that sums up my thoughts
Source: http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=h...:0&tx=80&ty=66Quote:
Instead of just taking the stance of anti-UI mod, I’ve grown more in the direction if wanting a revolution in UI design and functionality as it pertains to the fundamentals of the game. I would rather our understanding of how a UI factors into gameplay change. We need something new, something fresh, and something that will allow us to move away from the, albeit functional, rudimentary hotbar.
Until there is a UI revolution, new games being developed should integrate all of the functionality players want into the stock UI and continue to develop it by working closely with players to find out what is missing. The UI should be patched with as aggressively as any balancing changes — it’s clearly important to a great many. Can the UI ever be perfect? No, but if it can’t be patched to improve then it is a failure on the devs part from the get-go.
UI mods, in general, simply do too much. They may not automate the game but providing all of this information at peoples fingertips actually ruins the spirit of the game. Part of what makes playing a DPS class a challenge is managing aggro levels. If a UI mod can practically tell you everything about aggro, what’s the point of being skilled or attempting to learn? I think I can understand now why my teachers in high school did not allow us to use calculators. If you do not understand how or why something works the way it does then you’re just going through the motions and will never improve.
There is absolutely -nothing- wrong with a ‘pure’ UI that plays the game the way it was meant to be played. The problem? It’s starting to be turned upside down so that the games are designed with UI mods in mind. That’s the wrong direction that will certainly never lead to a UI revolution.
Stop being pretentious...
Whoever has their stuff set up like that -wants- it like that.
Its not like they are going to ram it down your throat -- anyone can tell you that WoW is nowhere near serious enough to require half of the shit people invest into it in the name of being "hardcore."
WoW is one of the most stupidly simplistic MMOs ever... that's half of the reason its so damn popular.
Half of that shit is just obstinate laziness. If you find yourself compelled to do stuff like that, that's your problem, not anyone else's. If you find yourself uninterested or disgusted by it, that's your problem, not anyone else's.
This is the same as the power leveling drama -- people terrified of having options because they feel they can't trust themselves to make a practical decision. It's just plain disgraceful.
The game shouldn't have to overtly limit people just because you're terrified of YOUR HUD being ugly. I'd never set my crap up to be as cluttered as ridiculous as that, but I'm definitely not going to tell Mr. Elitist that he can't just because I don't like it. What exactly gives you the right to tell define how other people should play the game when it has absolutely no effect on you?
Being able to use calculators in HS means you can blow past the BS work that can be done on a computer easily into actually interesting mathematics.
Being able to modify the UI and have more tools at your disposal means you can do much more interesting things in and with the battle system.
Everyone has their own ideas about what the UI should look like - this is why customisation is the ultimate win. Configurable UIs -is- the UI revolution. If you've got a great idea for a revolutionary, shiny, spanking-new UI... learn Flash or get a friend to, implement it, distribute it. If it's good, and cleaner than anything else out there, people will use it, heck, it might get implemented into the core game!
It's not even an extreme example, it's a stupid example. People are pulling the absolute worst UI setups that they can to try to prove a point. It's not working. Healers (as the person in the picture is) do not need recount. They can check the healing done if they want to, but it's definitely not needed. I close my recount when I'm healing. Those party frames are absolutely atrocious. Get Grid+Clique, Healbot, or Vuhdo and all those raid frames will be in one nice consolidated box with nothing but health bars in it. Dot timer has a fully customizable scaling option, so the "Debuff" and the "Buffs" sitting in the middle and right portion of the screen are outrageously large. Omen threat meter as a healer is just stupid, imo. A healer is not going to pull aggro from a tank. Very few people actually pull threat from the tank in a raid, healers are like last on that list, so again, useless addon for a healing druid to have on their screen. Even if someone else pulled hate, they don't need the addon to warn them before it happens, because if they actually had a -good- UI setup with a proper healing addon that's not all over the screen, they would simply have to watch the green health bars and heal the one that moved in under 1 second.
There's also a ton of ridiculous crap on their toolbars that they don't even need to put on there, plus they have the UI scaled as large as possible. My bottom toolbar doesn't even reach all the way across the bottom of the screen on my standard monitor, never mind my HD widescreen that the vast majority of XIV's playerbase is probably playing the game on.
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/4972/16787145.jpg
Simple UI with minimal addons. The left boxes are healthbars for all 40 people in the BG. More than any raid would have, yet they're not all over the screen like some people here would have you believe they have to be.
I know it is off topic, but god that game looks awful. It's like a crayola factory exploded.
All my friends tried to make me play it... it must be fun but... I just can't stand looking at that graphics... it hurts my eyes...
meh can't say much I played DDO and the graphics on that one was bad also... I just liked the system a lot it kept me and wife playing after FFXI until FFXIV was announced lol
Something like that is more like just staring at numbers instead of playing the game, you can't even see the game in that pic. But hey, I'm not against it if that's how someone wants their screen to look. But personally I like a UI that is both functional and asthetically presentable
I love it, if it's not the UI that people are complaining about (with ridiculous screenshots of the worst UI screens possible), then it's how the game looks like crap. My picture was a horrible example of the game. I was sitting in a flag room with another Shaman and we both had elementals and totems out which are blocking the whole screen. Obviously it's not realistic graphics. The game has been out 7 years, and the WC series has been out far longer. That horse was dead by 2005, we're discussing the UI customization, not the graphics of the game.
Even that "Simple" UI is hella cluttered...I want to play a game not play with spreadsheets of information.
I guess when UI addons come out I'll be "That guy" who doesn't have the boss mods. Oh well good for the people who can't learn to play a game. Seriously I got nothing against most UI mods, automating stuff like healing though...I think thats just cheating the game and gives a massive advantage over other players.
How is it cluttered? I could have moved a few addons more, but I queued as I logged on and didn't tweak anything, nor did I close recount in the lower right corner while I was healing. All you see is the complete 40 health bars I need to heal above the chat box and the timers on towers for the BG on the right side of the screen. There isn't a spreadsheet of information at all. You need to know tower timers if you're defending them. You can see all of the screen fine.
There's no "clutter" about that UI besides recount not being moved all the way to the right besides the right tool bars and the decursive boxes (that I doubt many people even noticed) being moved over to the right as well. There's far more clutter on my XIV screen since I can't resize half of the crap. The only time XIV looks decent is when I hook up my HDTV. That WoW SS was on my regular monitor that isn't WS.
I just can't imagine how PS3 users will get to benefit from custom UI at all. What SE should do is make it where you'd have to submit a UI first, and then they can approve it and make it available for download through PSN and PC for others to use. I'm not sure how else this would work out for PS3 users.
PS3 users will have the controller UI which will probably be similar to XI or how XIV is now. There's not point in putting the PC UI on the PS3 because very few PS3 users will be using a KB/mouse, which is what the PC UI will be developed around, even from 3rd party addons by players.
Even so, you do make sense when you say that most PS3 users will be playing with a controller, but there will also be many that will be using a USB keyboard. Though, that is not even the point of what I was saying. I am more concerned about how PS3 users won't be able to benefit from custom UIs. Whether they are for aesthetics or for lolhax.
Also, if you think about it. What if end game content had parties that required their members to have certain mods? PS3 users would be at a disability, perhaps rendering them from experience such hardcore content.
I played XI with a controller and a keyboard. I also play WoW with a KB/Mouse. Unless SE allows users to keybind, PS3 users with a keyboard would benefit more from the standard UI than a mouse combo. Custom UIs are useless without a mouse (which many PS3 users won't use) or the ability to keybind stuff to their own liking (which I highly doubt SE even has the foresight to think of).
You're also assuming there will be all kinds of addons. As another person already stated, it will likely be only addons for the actual UI, not addons that work off the coding of the game like a lot of WoW's addons. I highly doubt SE would be dumb enough to allow PC users access to addons that show boss moves like DBM in WoW or damage meters, unless they separate PS3 and PC users onto different servers.
Pretty much any information that invades the edges and center of my screen is intrusive to me. Perhaps it's just me though, I don't want my party member screen to take up a massive chunk of the left side of my screen.
While I admit re-aranging the screen would make it look 10x better it's still far too much information for my tastes. If I need to "Know" tower timers and need a UI addon just to know them then something is wrong. A developer shouldn't be adding content that requires the community to add a UI addon just to be bearable.
Then again I'm sure it would be possible to do with a normal UI isn't it? Or has WoW become so dependant on custom UI's that anyone who doesn't want to use them is left in the cold because they are playing the game the way it was intended to be played...
PS3 players are going to be shunned as if they were all loldrgs back in the early days of FFXI if UI mods turn to be a "Required" staple of the PC atmosphere. I'm sure I'll do fine without UI additions I'll learn the timers without a popup box to remind me, I'll use the normal party interface to view my party stats, I don't need a parser when I'm playing I can parse and check the stats AFTER the fight, I pray I don't need 600 random icons scattered around my screen (Probably all bound to some inane hotkeys).
It's good that we will have the option, but I think I'll opt out unless people can make some UI elements that I find are less intrusive than current ones, or perhaps just aesthetic changes.
What I'm worried about is PC players gaining a immesnly huge advantage over the console and vanila UI players, stuff like "Healbots" and whatnot don't really ring as "Fun" to me.
I don't think you are quite grasping it... I have 40 people's health bars in that box. That is the WHOLE BG's health frames. If I was raiding, it would either be 10 or 25, which is much smaller than that. It's not simply a party's frame, it's the whole freaking raid's frame.
Obviously no clue how WoW works. Towers take a few minutes to cap. If I see a huge horde of people running to the tower and there's 10-20 seconds left until my faction takes it, I can jump down and run away. If it's more, I need to stay and defend. It's not required, though not using timers is the same level of stupidity as not using macros. Do you have to have them? No. Though you're pretty inefficient if you don't.Quote:
While I admit re-aranging the screen would make it look 10x better it's still far too much information for my tastes. If I need to "Know" tower timers and need a UI addon just to know them then something is wrong. A developer shouldn't be adding content that requires the community to add a UI addon just to be bearable.
You're looking at PC MMOs through the looking glass of XI/XIV/multiplatform MMOs. It is simply more efficient to have your playerbase use addons and slowly add them into the game at your leisure than to try to tackle every angle possible. Raidframe UIs were popular, so Blizz added their own eventually.
You're making a critical error. WoW has not been meant to be played with the custom UI and no addons since around Vanilla/BC. Starting in WoTLK, Blizzard started designing elements of the game around the majority using addons. The minority who refuse to use them don't get invited to raids anyway, or at least most of the don't. And no, it's not possible to have tower timers with the standard UI, nor recount, nor any number of things.Quote:
Then again I'm sure it would be possible to do with a normal UI isn't it? Or has WoW become so dependant on custom UI's that anyone who doesn't want to use them is left in the cold because they are playing the game the way it was intended to be played...
Again, looking at WoW through XI/XIV glasses. XIV will never become like WoW because combat is way too slow. WoW's combat is constant casting, constant key presses, constant moving out of the fire, constant situational awareness. Now, can you tell me anything that happens in XIV that requires situational awareness other than what you're fighting? No, you can't. Imagine if every boss fight was like Ifrit. You're constantly having to move out of the fire, constantly having to pay attention to him dropping pillars to DPS down, etc. THAT is how WoW is. FFXIV will never be like that. Most Ifrit posts I've seen already complain about "animation lag" from his ground move killing people. It's not "animation lag" it's people not moving their asses out of the fire, because they're not used to having to be aware of situations like that. I fought Ifrit a few times, and not once did I have a problem moving out of the cracks on the ground. Didn't have an add-on telling me to do it either, so that argument that WoW addons make it easier is null.Quote:
PS3 players are going to be shunned as if they were all loldrgs back in the early days of FFXI if UI mods turn to be a "Required" staple of the PC atmosphere. I'm sure I'll do fine without UI additions I'll learn the timers without a popup box to remind me, I'll use the normal party interface to view my party stats, I don't need a parser when I'm playing I can parse and check the stats AFTER the fight, I pray I don't need 600 random icons scattered around my screen (Probably all bound to some inane hotkeys).
People use DBM because it is too much to juggle to watch your cooldowns, watch for fire spawning under you, watch for range if another player has a bomb-type debuff, watch for threat, watch for boss abilities, watch for buff abilities popping up from players or if the boss has a unique mechanic, watch for adds, etc. You never have to have as much situational awareness for that in XI/XIV, and never will be specifically because it is nearly impossible to do without addons. WoW doesn't have to limit itself to only have boss mechanics that people can do without addons, because 100% of the community has the option to download the addons. XI/XIV never will have that option due to PS2/PS3, thus SE can never tune boss encounters to be like WoW or any other modern MMO.
That's fine, and your choice. However nearly all addons in MMOs are customizable and you can set them up however you like.Quote:
It's good that we will have the option, but I think I'll opt out unless people can make some UI elements that I find are less intrusive than current ones, or perhaps just aesthetic changes.
It's clear you don't understand what "healbots" are since it's called "Healbot" and has nothing to do with a bot. No matter how I explain it, you're going to complain about it, because you already have your mind made up that it's a horrible addition to a PC only game.Quote:
What I'm worried about is PC players gaining a immesnly huge advantage over the console and vanila UI players, stuff like "Healbots" and whatnot don't really ring as "Fun" to me.
Healing addons such as Healbot and Vuhdo(what I personally use) take away the standard party/raid frames and consolidate them into a box that you can customize the height/width of. These addons allow you to keybind your healing spells to the mouse, along with combos, like Shift+left click, etc.
Normally, with the default UI, I would have to take my mouse, go to the person I want to heal, click that person's unit frame, then click/keypress the healing spell. These healing addons streamline the process. They take out the unit frames and just show the healthbar. From here, instead of having to select who you want to heal, you simply press the same healing spell while your mouse is hovered over the healthbar, or you click on the bar with your mouse to use the healing spell you have bound.
Ex. I want to use Chain Heal on my Shaman to the tank in the party.
Default: I have to select the tank by clicking on his unit frame in the party window. Then I have to click chain heal on my toolbar or hit my keybind for it.
Healbot/Vuhdo: I mouse over the tank's healthbar, I hold alt and left click (my personal keybinding for chain heal).
Grid+Clique: I can either mouse over the tank's healthbar and press a keybind that would be the same bind as in the "default" example, or I can do the same as the second example.
Combat in WoW is much faster paced, hence the need to streamline aspects like this. You simply do not have the time to highlight each player you're healing in a raid. FFXIV will never be like this, because there is no need. Like XI, damage isn't being done to your tank every .5 seconds like it is in WoW. You can easily toss a cure out, then wait 5 seconds before having to toss another one out. Combat simply is slow enough to warrant this type of gameplay. Addons only become mainstream when they start becoming needed. That isn't because the players have no skill, it's because things happen to fast for human response time + cooldowns to be able to keep up, or there are too many things going on at once to keep track of all of them without assistance.
And they only become needed when the devs start designing the encounters around said add-ons to keep any sort of challenge.Quote:
Combat simply is slow enough to warrant this type of gameplay. Addons only become mainstream when they start becoming needed.
And they only need to start designing encounters around add-ons when they allow combat add-ons in the first place. This board really needs to be renamed "Chicken Little XIV." I, along with other people, already stated that SE will likely only allow add-ons that deal with the UI. Not add-ons that show when a boss is going to start an ability. Why? Because PS3 users cannot have access to those add-ons. Combat in XI/XIV is slow for a reason. It's available on the console. You cannot be as fast on a controller with a ton of spells/abilities as you are on a keyboard and a mouse. It is not possible. I can cast any of my spells in WoW with a keypress. I cannot do that on a controller, because I would be limited to a certain number of buttons. Thus combat will be slower (as it is in XI/XIV) because it has to account for controller users.
Fair enough, I mistook what a Healbot was and it sounds perfectly reasonable. You say I keep looking at this from a XIV/XI/Console MMO viewpoint...perhaps that is becuase we are on the boards of said type of game and discussing it's effects on said type of game.
I personally think making it so players who modify their UI have an advantage over those who opt out is lazy game design. Addons should never be "Needed" and I personally think that is one of WoW's biggest faults, just my opinion though.
Considering we are playing a game revolved around PS3 players being involved as well I do hope the limit the type of addons that can be created, as much as I'd love a few myself I don't believe in having massively unfair advantages over people who couldn't mod the UI even if they wanted too.
Having every single person in the zones healthbar on your screen is a strange concept for me, I can imagine if in XI if Whm's could see every persons HP on the battlefield it would have changed the dynamic of ballista alot just because of that add-on and it seems the same thing has happened with your example. Oh well it will still be interesting to see how XIV grows.
I played WoW from release until about 8 months ago...
The only add-ins I ran were the ones my guild "required" and I left the UI for all of them off when I played. I only had them installed so a "check" would show that I had it...
I tanked everything, no problem.
I will always argue that people who believe that add-ins are required to perform suffer from a severe intellectual deficiency.
The only thing that can possibly stop PS3 users from using addons are memory issues, that's it. The PS3 has native keyboard/mouse support from USB-wired to USB-wireless to anything Bluetooth. There is almost nothing stopping a game from being played on a PS3 as it'd be played on a PC.
With that said, I hope they do require an approval process for any custom UI.